


I Loved A Maid

by averita



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averita/pseuds/averita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catelyn and Ned, four seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Loved A Maid

_as sweet as spring_

The sidewalks are slippery with snowmelt, but the sun shines brightly overhead and after months of heavy winter weather, the crisp, relative warmth of the morning is too tempting to resist. Her apartment complex has a decent enough fitness center, but Catelyn has missed her morning jog route, the comforting _thump-thump, thump-thump_ of her sneakers on pavement as she takes in the world around her.

In high school she ran cross-country and has the medals to prove it, but these days she simply runs because she likes it. It clears her head, the rhythm of her feet and the steady beat of her music, and god knows her head has needed clearing the past few months. Thoughts of finals and graduation and the looming question of _what next?_ disappear, and for a few precious minutes, she doesn’t have to look beyond one foot in front of the other.

She has been running for nearly forty five minutes when she collapses onto her usual bench, blessedly dry and snow-free, to shrug off her hoodie and take a long sip of water. Her heart races in the best way, and the nape of her is warm and sticky as she shakes out her ponytail and collects the strands that had come loose before gathering it up once more.

“Catelyn?” A familiar voice cuts through her hazy awareness, and she blinks, focusing her gaze on the figure she hadn’t noticed approaching her.

Ned Stark hasn’t changed in the months since she last saw him, and neither has Ice, the lanky, aging husky at the end of the leash he holds. Catelyn laughs as the dog tugs Ned closer, sniffing eagerly at her lap as she drops her still-unbound hair into a messy halo around her shoulders to scratch his ears. Ice whines softly in appreciation, blissfully closing his eyes as Catelyn looks up at his owner.

“Hi, Ned,” she says. “What are you up to?”

Ned gives a tug to Ice’s leash and the dog obediently sits, but doesn’t move his chin from where it rests on Catelyn’s knee. “Getting to know the neighborhood,” he says, eyeing Ice wryly. “And making friends, apparently.”

“Oh, Ice and I are well acquainted,” she laughs. Ice, the longtime Stark family pet, wags his tail at the sound of his name. “He’s a good boy.” Ned laughs as well, a low, slightly awkward chuckle, and then falls silent.

She hasn’t seen him since she and Brandon split – they used to run into each other on campus, but Ned graduated a year ago and last she heard was interning with Jon Arryn, no small feat for someone his age. They’d always been friendly, but she had seen less and less of him as things with Brandon deteriorated, a fact that she found strangely disappointing, if understandable.

The easy thing to do now would be to smile, tell him how nice it was to run into him, and be on her way; she’s admittedly tempted to do just that, especially as the silence between them grows longer and more strained. But it’s surprisingly nice to see him, and she finds herself curious about what he’s doing here, why he wants to get to know this neighborhood, and what he’s been up to. If there’s a little part of her that wants to know about Brandon, too – well, old habits die hard, and she’s spent the better part of three years worrying about him.

They start to speak at the same time; Ned says, “Well, I’ll let you –” just as Catelyn asks, “What are you –?”

They both break off, Catelyn with a giggle and Ned with a bashful grin. “Sorry,” Catelyn says. Later, she’ll think that it was the adrenaline still pumping through her that convinces her to ask, “Do you want to grab a coffee?”

She doesn’t know what convinces him to say yes, but she finds she’s glad he does.

_as fair as summer_

Ned doesn’t complain, exactly – that’s not his style – but this is the fourth time in ten minutes that he’s sighed and tugged uncomfortably at the neck of his shirt, and this time Catelyn rolls her eyes.

“You’re not going to _melt_ , Ned, but if you want to go back, you can just say so!”

Ned grimaces apologetically. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m okay.” Catelyn bites her lip at how miserable he looks, red-faced and sweating through the white t-shirt he doesn’t seem to want to take off. It’s hard to hold in her laugh, but she manages.

“It’ll be cooler once we’re further out,” she reassures him, for probably the tenth time this morning. They had had a slower start than she had planned – she had been up late with Lysa the night before and hit the snooze button a few more times than usual, and she’d forgotten how busy The Trident could get on game days. The food was delicious as usual, but it had been nearly eleven by the time they had made their way over to the marina. Now, not quite an hour later, the sun is beating down on them and even Catelyn has to admit that it’s uncomfortable. She can feel her sunscreen melting between her shoulderblades.

True to his word, Ned quits fidgeting and allows Catelyn to guide them down the river and into the open water without further stress. A light wind picks up and she pulls her hat further down over her eyes, gazing out at the familiar blue waters, as much a home to her as Riverrun itself.

She had planned to come home right after graduation, but Edmure had been away at camp through most of June, and Uncle Brynden had turned a three-day business trip overseas into a two-week vacation. Not wanting to miss them, Catelyn had delayed her trip until her whole family was home, a decision she had begun to regret by the time Ned called a week after she arrived. He’d be accompanying Jon Arryn to a meeting at the Vale Industries Headquarters at the Eeyrie, he told her, a poorly hidden strain of pride in his voice.

The Eeyrie was only a five hour drive from Riverrun, and though she had phrased it as an invitation, Catelyn suspects she had sounded perfectly desperate for a friendly face after a week of nothing but bickering between her father, sister, and uncle. “I’ll pick you up,” she had offered, but Ned had refused, instead renting a car and arriving late Friday evening.

Yesterday had been fun. She was well acquainted with Ned’s childhood home, but she had delighted in showing him around Riverrun. They had gone fishing with Edmure, wandered down the beach, and joined her family for dinner at a local restaurant by the docks in the evening. Unwillingly, she found herself remembering the first time Brandon had met her family; Lysa had flirted with him all evening as he cracked joke after inappropriate joke, Catelyn’s smile becoming more and more fixed as the dinnerwore on, her father not even faking amusement.

It couldn’t have been more different with Ned. He was polite and soft-spoken, asking Lysa about her classes and telling Edmure about the ice-fishing trip he had taken Benjen on the year before. Their father was quiet, as usual, but it was a thoughtful silence, as though he was simply observing. When they made their way to the parking lot, Brynden had pulled her aside, telling her gruffly, “You’ve done well with this one, Little Cat.”

She had protested, of course – admittedly, they had spent a great deal of time together since running into each other in March, but a lot of that was circumstance, she told herself.  
His new apartment was just a few blocks from hers, it turned out, and though their first few times hanging out together had been a little awkward, they've found a comfortable routine, often meeting for work and study sessions as her exams crept closer and his workload increased. She likes that she doesn’t have to constantly be “on” with him – they have fun together, and she’s discovered that he has a surprisingly dry sense of humor, but everything about Ned is honest and straightforward. The quiet, comfortable companionship is nice; she lost touch with most of her local friends after the break-up, and though the irony that the closest friend she's made after the fact is Brandon’s brother is not lost on her, she tries not to think about it.

These days, there are a lot of things she tries not to think about when it comes to Ned.

She never took Brandon out on the boat. Sailing is a peaceful, calming experience for her and though she had loved many things about him, those were not qualities that he possessed in abundance.

“Okay,” she finally says, turning off the motor and shaking her head to clear. “Help me get the sail up.”

It is cooler out in the open water, and though Ned has never been sailing, he’s strong and follows directions well. Catelyn, of course, learned to sail long before she learned to drive, and so it’s not long before they’re drifting steadily across the water, waves lapping lightly at the sides.

Catelyn pulls her t-shirt off, revealing the faded bikini top she’d thrown on this morning, and grimaces as she feels her slick skin. She pulls the bottle of sunscreen from her bag and squeezes a generous amount into her palm, rubbing it over her neck and shoulders before pulling off her sunglasses and hat to swipe the rest over her face.

“You want some?” she asks, offering the bottle to Ned – he had practically bathed himself in the stuff this morning, but she knows as well as anyone the importance of reapplying.

Ned takes it, gazing at her curiously, and she looks down , suddenly self-conscious. “What?” she asks, fighting the urge to flinch back as he stands and reaches towards her.

“You just – here,” he says quietly, and she sucks in a quick breath as he gently cups her face and smoothes his thumb across her nose. She leans into his touch, swaying slightly with the movement of the boat, and closes her eyes. “Sunscreen,” she hears him say breathlessly.

She nods, and then his mouth is on hers, or maybe hers is on his, and his hands are warm and rough on her shoulders, sending tingles down her spine and burning hotter than the sun ever could.

_as red as autumn_

Catelyn has never especially liked Halloween. She’s not very artistic, and while she can admire the work and effort her friends put into their costumes, it’s not something she’s inclined to spend much time on herself. As a child she enjoyed trick-or-treating with Lysa and later Edmure, but in high school the parties got wilder and the costumes racier, and she preferred staying home, handing out candy to the kids who came knocking, and going to school the next day without a hangover. Her freshman year in college she accompanied her dorm mates to what wound up being the first of Robert Baratheon’s annual Halloween parties, feeling ridiculous in her mermaid costume, but also secretly relishing the double takes and the grown-up feeling of sipping spiked punch.

She’d outgrown that soon enough, and hasn’t attended these last few years, but when Ned – who had been Robert’s roommate all through college and survived far more than Halloween parties – had raised it, reluctantly explaining that he hadn’t spent much time with Robert lately and didn’t want to disappoint him, she’d shrugged. “Why not?” she asked, smiling at the relief that washed over Ned’s face and giving him a quick kiss.

Half an hour after they arrive, she is beginning to see very clearly just _why not_.

The campground is full of people, hardly any of whom she recognizes, and a large bonfire illuminates quickly falling dusk. Between that, her favorite olive green pea-coat and boots, and Ned’s arm around her, she isn’t especially cold, but as she takes in the sight before her, her insides feel like ice.

Her break-up with Brandon had been amiable enough, and though they hadn’t really kept in touch, the few occasions they had seen each other – exchanging belongings, an awkward run-in at the bank – had been perfectly cordial. He had sent her a congratulatory email after her graduation, and though she suspects that Ned – who had watched her walk the stage – had probably been the one to remind him that it had even happened, she appreciated the gesture nonetheless. Whatever hard feelings she’d had toward him had gone, and as she became closer and closer with Ned, she wondered if they might even be able to be friends again one day.

That idea had fallen flat when Ned stormed into her apartment, several weeks after the boat trip that changed everything. “My brother’s an ass,” he informed her when she asked what was wrong, and though she never got the whole story, it was plain that Brandon had found out just who his brother’s new girlfriend was, and was not at all happy about it.

Ned, when he had calmed down, talked her out of confronting Brandon herself – it might be pointless, she argued, but it would feel good – and in the end had coldly told his brother not to talk to them until he was ready to grow up.

Now, as Catelyn watches her ex-boyfriend press Barbrey Dustin against a tree, grinding obscenely against her and every now and then glancing over to where Ned and Catelyn are standing, she realizes that they’ll likely be waiting a long time.

The blunt tips of Ned’s nails begin to bite into her palm, and the sensation is enough to draw her out of her horrified reverie. Ned, she sees, is white with fury. He starts forward, but she grabs him, pulling him to face her.

“No,” she whispers, turning resolutely away. “No, don’t, please. Let’s just go.”

That wouldn’t have worked on Brandon, if the situation was reversed – she can picture it, him stalking over and punching his brother square in the jaw. Barbrey would shriek, and the crowd, already loud and drunk, would flock like flies to the fight. The fleeting image of Petyr Baelish unconscious on a hospital bed flashes through her mind, and she tugs again at Ned, grateful all over again that he is nothing like his brother.

They stumble through the woods away from the crowd, Ned’s hand almost uncomfortably tight around hers, but she doesn’t mind. The drunken yells and laughter fade away along with the firelight, and when she finally slows, sinking onto an oversized stump to the side of the trail, she’s shivering.

Ned sits next to her and she instinctively pulls his arm around her, snuggling into his side. He’s always so _warm_ – she teases him that he’s cold-blooded, but as fall settles and days grow shorter and chillier, she is rarely as comfortable as when she is curled against him, skin to skin.

There are many layers between them now, but none so heavy as the anger still holding him tense, and the grief she feels swelling in the pit of her stomach.

“I didn’t know he was going to be here,” Ned finally says. “And even – I can’t believe –”

The sad thing, Catelyn thinks, is that she _can_. She knows that Brandon has had a hard time these last months, between Lyanna running off, tension with his father, and the rumors she’s heard about Ashara Dayne and the baby she lost. He’s a good man at heart, Catelyn thinks, but like his sister (and her own), like Robert Baratheon and so many of the friends they’ve shared the last years of their life with, he hasn’t grown up yet, and can’t understand why the world isn’t waiting for him to catch up.

“It’s all right,” Catelyn says tightly, squeezing her hands together between her knees. After a moment she laughs bitterly. “Well, no, it’s not, but there’s no point making a scene over it. That’s his job.”

Ned squeezes her shoulder, and she sighs shakily. “I’m sorry you’re caught up in this,” he murmurs, and this time her laugh is less bitter.

“I’m not,” she says, tilting her head to look up at him. “I’m happy right where I am.”

Ned’s gaze softens, and he pulls away, turning so that they’re facing each other fully. “Are you sure?” he asks quietly. He sounds suddenly, shockingly vulnerable; the tears she’s been blinking away burn her eyes, and she nods, the lump in her throat becoming painful.

“Yeah,” she whispers, the words thick and salty in her mouth. “Of course I am, Ned.” She pauses, pulling her hands from her lap to take his. “I love you.”

He exhales harshly, pulling her close again. She rests her head against his chest so that she feels the words when he presses a kiss to her hair and says, “I love you too, Cat. I love you very much.”

She shivers again, but as the still, quiet night stretches on around them, she barely notices the cold.

_as white as winter_

She’ll never fully adjust to the cold, she has too much Southern blood for that, but this winter has been far more bearable than the others she’s experienced since moving north. The weather isn’t any better – on the contrary, she hasn’t seen anything green since September, and the ice storm last month was the worst in fifteen years – but she has found new and delightful ways of keeping warm.

Ned spends most nights at her place, which is closer to the school where she works and more importantly, better insulated. They’ve come to a compromise with the thermostat at night – he still complains that it’s too warm and she can barely move through the cocoon of layers she sleeps in, but they are able to share a bed, and she sleeps better cold than she does alone, these days.

It’s almost scary, she thinks, how easily their lives have slotted together. She had been nineteen when she started dating Brandon; he was her first serious boyfriend, and she compromised a lot more than he did, especially at the beginning. With Ned, they found a rhythm right from the start, compromises formed through observation and conversation and a willingness to make sacrifices when necessary; it seems so obvious, so _easy_ , but between Lysa and Edmure, her father, and then Brandon, she realizes now that she has never had a significant relationship in which she is an equal partner. It’s thrilling and exciting and everything she didn’t know she’d been missing.

“You’re taking your time,” she calls, turning to glance over the back of the sofa and earning a glare from Ice, who prefers her feet to the nice – not to mention expensive – dog bed she had gotten him for Christmas. She looks at it, abandoned in the corner of her living room, and glares right back at him.

“Sorry,” Ned says, stepping out of the kitchen with a mug of tea in each hand. She takes hers, slipping the sleeves of her sweatshirt (well, Ned’s sweatshirt) over her hands and wrapping them both around the cup. He sits next to her and she settles against him, her back to his chest and his arm loose around her shoulders, her thick flannel blanket wrapped tightly around her.

“Mmm,” she murmurs, taking a sip. “Thank you.”

Ned places his cup on the coffee table in front of them, stretching out to rest his bare feet on top of the magazine next to it. “I got you something,” he tells her, a slight smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth.

Catelyn smacks his arm. “Ned!” He laughs, steadying her mug as the tea threatens to spill.

They had agreed to forego gifts over the holidays in favor of saving up for a trip to Essos over the summer, and celebrated with a nice dinner the night before she left for Riverrun. Ned had originally planned to join her, but four days before they were going to leave, Brandon had called.

“Lyanna’s back,” he said shortly. “She’s pregnant.”

And so Catelyn had gone to Riverrun and Ned to Winterfell, and in the end, it had been for the best. The emotional hurricane that Ned had walked into could have ended badly, but it proved to be the catalyst needed for him and Brandon to sort things out; she’s still not entirely sure what that involved, but as they’re on speaking terms again and supporting their sister, she’s not inclined to question it.

So Christmas had passed, and they rang in the new year over champagne at her apartment, and now, she smacks him again as he reaches behind the couch and hands her a large, soft package wrapped in plain tissue paper.

“It’s not a Christmas present!” he insists, taking her tea and handing her the gift. “It’s a – a lifestyle investment. For me. It’s selfish, actually.”

Catelyn eyes him, scooting forward to sit up properly and absently stroking Ice’s head when he whines at the disturbance. “All right,” she says suspiciously, unconvinced, but bites her lip in anticipation as she carefully unwraps the present.

It’s a thick, soft wool blanket, the same light blue as her sheets. “It’s gorgeous,” she murmurs, smoothing a hand over it. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

“It’s electric,” Ned explains, nervously drumming his fingers on her arm. “It stays warm for about eight hours, so it should keep you warm at night. And you won’t have to wear so many clothes,” he adds slyly, grinning as Catelyn hits him for a third time, much more half-heartedly than before.

“You really are selfish,” she teases, cupping his cheek and leaning in to kiss him properly. The blanket falls onto her lap as she wraps both arms around him, shifting up to settle on his lap. “Selfish,” she breathes, pulling back just slightly, “and sweet –” a quick, teasing kiss as she grinds down against him – “and thoughtful –” he groans as she makes her way down his neck – “and _mine_.”

She stands, pulling him up with one hand and grabbing the blanket with the other, and is about to drag him to the bedroom when he stops her for another long, sweet kiss. When he pulls back they are both breathless, and his eyes are dark and serious.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of using "Ice" as the name of a pet came from mautadite's wonderful fic "Rumour Has It".


End file.
